Lara Croft: Origins

Chapter IX: Armed

Chapter IX

     When I wake, it's dark and still raining, now more fiercely than before. I blink the sleep out of my eyes and stretch it out of my body. I push myself up and stand. I was on the opposite side of the mountain I was facing before I'd jumped down into the mineshaft. Now the environment shifted into something totally different, it was as if the mountains were a boundary between different biomes.

Now the ground was barren, grassless, and plagued with leafless trees. Mountains were still in an abundance. Most were little more than a few hundred feet tall, but one in particular scraped the dark clouds above.

The trail became less visible and ceased about 30 feet ahead. I had no other indication of where to go to find any of the others, but my options were limited regardless so I went ahead.

Lightening flashes, casting shadows across the rock walls. The moon was doing me no favors in terms of lighting the way, the clouds being too thick.

The dark had created the illusion of many mountains but now I could see the two mountains serving as walls into the heart of the island were only extensions of the one I had to cross to get here. The formations ended abruptly. Setting me loose into the wilderness of the island where now again there were trees and everything almost resembled a normal forest, almost.

My breathing quickened. Palms were sweaty, but that was the heat right? I could get lost and God knows what could lay in these woods. Something was blocking the moons light. I'd thought it was the clouds but it was something else. I approached the moon. It was my only sense of direction. All the trees looked the same. I closed in on my mystery object. A river crossed my path, and a little to the right was a wooden bridge crossing it. On the fence posts of the bridge were torches encased in metal frames with roofs to prevent them from getting wet.

It is a given that people had lived here at one point. Though the bridge was proof of humans there was also the torches and the path and the shrine and the pickaxe and the mineshaft. The meat I found in the mine was only about a couple of days old. Okay so present tense not past tense. People still lived here. Isolated from the world.

I wanted to look around to see if I saw anyone or anything. I threaded through the trees with care. Not a good idea to alert something to your presence especially if you don't even know what that something is.

Leaves and twigs broke under my sneakers. As I scouted the area I became more familiar with the terrain. Vines and trees to climb. Walls to traverse and hills for better viewpoints. I couldn't help thinking how cool it'd be to jump between certain points like in the movies. I probably wasn't going to be watching a movie for a long time.

I came to a particular tree in a clearing that stood out for some reason. Shadows were being cast upon it in a strange way. As I got closer I saw why, from one of its brittle branches was hanging a rotting corpse. The smell was overpowering. My stomach which had been starving already was now threatening to empty what little it had. Flies buzzed around and the wind of the storm pushed it around a little, making it that much creepier. Slung across the body's back was a bow and a quiver with a few arrows. I had to get that bow. My stomach agreed. I hated to think of what I was going to have to kill.

The tree's branch was too high to reach and the trunk was too thick to wrap my legs around and climb. But through the branches, a rope was strung about 15 yards away on opposite sides of the tree to towering... telephone poles? Hardly the strangest thing I've see today. Maybe I could climb the post and down the rope to reach the bow. I jogged down to one post and climbed a hill close to the pole. I didn't really know what I was doing until I jumped off the hill and slung my pickaxe around the rope to slide down to the tree.